Raw Deal

“What’s in the trunk?”

Rex couldn’t have told you which of the fifty states was largest by area. His first guess would have been Nebraska. There is no drive in America that drags out the way I-80 does when you’re heading east on the prairie. It’s nothing but telephone poles and cornfields. The further east you go, the more it all looks the same. Like you’re driving in one of those old movies where they have that shot of the characters through the windshield and the background is all the same thing on a loop and the miles stretch out into the horizon further than they have any right to.

Reva slouched in the front seat with her bare feet poking out the window on the sideview mirror. She was mostly pretty, but time had crept in at the corners of her eyes, and around her pale lips from all the cigarettes. Rex had seen a photograph of her wearing a cheerleader’s uniform on her nightstand in one of those glittery frames you’d expect in a much younger girl’s bedroom. Holding it in his hands he said, “Man, you really used to be something.” That was the last time he’d seen that photo.

Rex checked that the needle was pegged on sixty-three and stared through the windshield over eight white knuckles. “It doesn’t matter what’s in the trunk.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You really want to know what’s in the box? Because if I tell you, then you’ll know. And when things get sideways you won’t be able to say you didn’t know.”

“So it is bad.”

“Christ Reva, what do you want me to say? What do you think we’re doing?”

“Your mom doesn’t even know we took her car! What if she reports it stolen?” Reva fumbled through her purse and started huffing on another cigarette. “They’re gonna pull us over and take you to jail for stealing a car and God knows what else. How you gonna pay for a lawyer?” Her eyes bulged and looked like they might fall straight out of her head. “You can’t even afford a speeding ticket!”

The rasp and hiss of a lighter being struck and a cigarette coming to life came from the back seat. Landon sat up and rubbed his eyes. “Who’s going to jail?”

“Nobody’s going to jail,” Rex sighed. “She won’t report it. She’d probably call first.”

Reva didn’t let up, “There’s no service out here! You won’t even know she called.”

The block letters on Rex’s phone read, NO SERVICE. “I got service. She won’t report it anyway so everyone calm down.”

Landon drew on his cigarette and cracked a window, blowing smoke toward the inch of space at the top. “How much further?”

“About three hours.”

“I just want to say again how much I appreciate you doing this.”

Rex spotted a State Trooper parked underneath a billboard advertising a riverboat casino. He held his breath expecting a burst of cherries in the rearview. When nothing happened, he exhaled slowly and shrugged, “What else was I gonna do?”

Last Sunday, Landon had called to say they’d found Larry at the bottom of the water tower. He hadn’t left a note or told anyone his plans, but there was a brown paper box in his room with Rex’s name on it. Rex and Reva had taken his mother’s car and driven to Scottsbluff for the funeral.

It had been a few years since Rex had seen or even spoken to Larry. Seeing him lying in the casket he noticed gray hair and sunken cheeks, scars that the mortician had tried to hide with makeup. He and Reva sat in the back of church so he could go smoke during the parts with scripture. He’d seen Tommy Doocy walk up the aisle with his family to take seats near the front. Tommy looked like he’d managed to find prosperity in selling insurance policies to farmers fretful of losing their houses and crops to calamity. Rex became acutely aware of his faded jeans and old pearl snap shirt.

Later, at the luncheon, Rex had been in a corner eating apple pie when Landon dragged him into an empty bedroom and locked the door. The bedspread and pillows were decorated with horseshoes and cowboy hats. Larry’s old Martin guitar was propped in the corner. Although it never got him anywhere, he had never missed a chance to serenade the girls.

Landon reached under the bed and pulled out a brown box with Rex’s name scrawled out on the top. Rex thought back to the five hundred dollars he loaned Larry to get his car running so they could make a run to Fort Lupton, Colorado and bring home a special kind of low. He thought the box might contain money still owed to him or some sentimental artifact from when they ran together, like his .38 Special or fishing lures.

The box didn’t hold cash or trinkets. Instead, it appeared to be two full pounds of unfinished business. “Hell no!” Rex closed the box and shoved it back into Landon’s hands, “Why would he leave that for me?”

“No idea?” Landon pulled a piece of paper from inside the box, “Maybe this will shed some light on it.”

The letter didn’t say a whole lot. Just that the box contained the last of Larry’s worldly possessions with any value. And he’d asked Rex do him a last kindness by liquidating the contents and making sure that his family received half the money.

“What’re you gonna do?”

Rex got up to pace the little bedroom. “I oughta throw it in the river and be done.”

“You may as well just give it to me. Might take me a year to sell it all, but it’d be better than throwing it away.”

“Who do you know that can handle this kind of weight?”

Landon shrugged, “Nobody. Larry never told me how he did business or who he did it with.”

“It doesn’t make sense he’d put this on me. There has to be someone else. I haven’t even seen him years.”

Landon closed the box and stood. “He always said that after you left, it stopped being fun. How you guys planned to make a pile of dough, then disappear in the Alaskan wilderness.” Landon pressed the box into Rex’s hands. “I reckon there isn’t anyone else. If there was, he’d have wrote them a letter.”

* * * * * * * * * * *

The sun was sinking toward Iowa across the Missouri River when Rex nosed the car into an empty rest stop near the airport. They smoked and watched planes land and leave like migratory birds.

Landon kept flipping his lighter open and shut. “So where’s The Goat? Is he standing us up?”

“It’s not The Goat. Just Goat. He’ll be here.” Rex only had to make the one call to find a buyer, which was fortunate since he didn’t have any ideas on who else might want two pounds of farm cooked methamphetamine. At first, Goat seemed pretty skeptical. It isn’t everyday you get a call from an old acquaintance trying to offload enough drugs to land you in prison for ten years. But he warmed up when Rex explained the situation with Larry, and that they’d essentially be doing a favor for the family.

Reva was gabbing on about some famous plastic people in her magazine when an old pickup truck rumbled into the parking lot.

“Shut up Reva, he’s here.”

Landon reached for the door handle but stopped short when Rex said to stay in the car.

The pickup came to a stop next to the car and Goat stepped out, grease up to his elbows. “Sorry I’m late. I was putting in some overtime.”

They walked around to the trunk where the box waited in the spare tire compartment. It was the type of scene that looked exactly like some kind of drug deal was going down. A couple beat up vehicles parked next to each other in an empty lot with three guys staring into a car trunk.

Landon grabbed the box, “You got the cash?”

Goat tossed a paper bag into the trunk. It looked like a kid’s sack lunch. When Rex and Larry had started out, they’d expected the money would be so abundant it would come in duffel bags.

Landon counted out the money. “Looks to be five thousand light.”

Goat shrugged, “That’s all there is.”

Rex could see things starting to come apart. “You said twenty on the phone.”

“Things changed. It’s hard to raise that much cash on short notice.” He scratched a sore under his chin, “You could just give me fifteen worth of crank. Or you can give me my money back and sell to someone else, that’s fine too.”

“I thought it was clear that this is a package deal. All or nothing.”

“Just give me the cash back and I’ll be on my way. Sorry for wasting your time.”

Before Rex could protest further, Landon stepped in, “You mind giving me and The Goat a minute?”

Rex gave Landon a sideways look and thought about it for a second. “Fine, but I’m not driving home with a trunk full of meth.”

He walked out to a little foot path that ran along the river and lit a cigarette. The water, gold in the last of the day’s sun, flowed out to meet the Mississippi somewhere south. He looked across into Iowa and thought he might swim there, but Iowa just looked like more Nebraska. Maybe he could build a raft and float downriver to someplace foreign sounding, like New Orleans, or Lafitte. When he turned back, he saw Goat climb in his pickup with the brown box. He gave a single wave to Rex and drove away.

In the car Landon tossed the cash onto Rex’s lap and reclined across the back seat like a man putting his feet up after a day of honest work. “It’s been a pretty good day.”

Rex switched on the headlights and pointed the car west. “Larry and I used to go straight to the casino after a deal like this. We spent money with both hands. Sometimes our luck would hit, we’d gamble all night and get a hotel room. More often than not we’d lose our asses and head home about as broke as we came.”

“My brother was never long on common sense. All this risk with nothing to show for it.”

“I think we did it because we never felt like the money was ours. Like we never deserved it.”

Landon took a thoughtful drag on his cigarette, “That sounds like Larry. Always had his head up his ass.”

“How’d you and Goat come to an agreement?”

“I said if he would be a gentleman about it, I’d eat the five thousand so long as he agreed to take two more pounds next month.”

Rex drove in silence, the red coal of Landon’s cigarette in the rearview. They made it all the way through “Seven Spanish Angels” before he worked up his nerve. “Larry didn’t write the letter.”

“They found him underneath it, like I said.” He flicked his cigarette out the window. “No one’s gonna put up a fuss for Larry, but he never had a stomach for heights. He just got sideways with the wrong folks.”

Landon fished another cigarette from his pocket, “Found his stash in less than ten minutes.” He made to light his cigarette and stopped, his voice shaking, “I thought the letter was the only way you’d help me.”

“He was trying to protect you.”

Landon leaned forward so that his head was between Rex and Reva. “We grew up in the same place. There wasn’t anything else to save me for.”

At the next exit Rex turned on the blinker and eased the car off the interstate toward the neon glow of the casino.